4G Americas, a wireless industry trade association representing the 3GPP family of technologies, announced that it has published an Executive Summary, 3GPP Release 11: Understanding the Standards for HSPA+ and LTE-Advanced Enhancements, to provide a concise overview of the essential features standardized in the latest release finalized by the global standards body. "3GPP standards have successfully driven the mobile marketplace to more than 6 billion connections worldwide," stated Vicki Livingston, Head of Communications at 4G Americas and a contributor to the paper. "There is a continuing story for 3GPP evolution in the coming years, with further enhancements to both HSPA+ and LTE-Advanced and the expansion of connectivity into Machine to Machine and many vertical industries." Progress on Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards is measured by the milestones achieved in particular Releases. New features are ‘functionality frozen' and are ready for implementation when a Release is completed. 3GPP works on a number of Releases in parallel, starting future work well in advance of the completion of the current Release (Rel). 3GPP Rel-11 standards for HSPA+ and LTE-Advanced were frozen in December 2012 with the core network protocols stable in December 2012 and radio access network (RAN) protocols stable in March 2013. The Executive Summary brings the previous association report on 3GPP Release 10 and Release 11 up to finalization or functional freeze of the standards. Key features reviewed include: For HSPA, Rel-11 introduces new capabilities such as: · 8-carrier downlink operation (HSDPA) · Downlink (DL) 4-branch Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas (either one will double maximum theoretical Downlink (DL) throughput rates to 336 Mbps) · DL Multi-Flow Transmission · Uplink (UL) dual antenna beamforming (both closed and open loop transmit diversity) · UL MIMO with 64 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (64-QAM) · Several CELL_FACH (Forward Access Channel) state enhancements (for smartphone type traffic) and non-contiguous HSDPA carrier aggregation For LTE, Rel-11 provides enhancements to the LTE-Advanced technologies introduced in Rel-10, such as: · Carrier Aggregation (CA) · Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS) and Self Organizing Networks (SON) · Introduction to the Co-ordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) feature for enabling coordinated scheduling and/or beamforming · Enhanced Physical Downlink Control Channel (EPDCCH) · Further enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (FeICIC) for devices with interference cancellation Finally, Rel-11 introduces several network and service related enhancements (most of which apply to both HSPA and LTE): · Machine Type Communications (MTC) · IP Multimedia Systems (IMS) · Wi-Fi integration · Home NodeB (HNB) and Home e-NodeB (HeNB) Chris Pearson, President of 4G Americas noted that, "With the tremendous amount of planning, technical contribution and development that has been extended by the many working groups at 3GPP, the mobile broadband industry has a solid technical future with HSPA and LTE-Advanced. The technical evolution of LTE, teamed with more spectrum and innovative regulatory policies, will go a long way in meeting the difficult mobile broadband demand challenge that society has placed on wireless carriers." The Executive Summary, 3GPP Release 11: Understanding the Standards for HSPA+ and LTE-Advanced Enhancements, was written collaboratively by members of 4G Americas and is available for free download. 4G Americas
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